Filmmaker holds auditions for 'Allison Red'

Two years ago, filmmaker Jeremy Ferguson entered his short film “Allison Red” into the Snake Alley Festival of Film, and it won the viewers’ choice award.

This weekend, the Muscatine native came back to Burlington in search of actors to bring that short film to life as a full-length feature film.

Auditions for “Allison Red” held at the Capitol Theater Saturday and Sunday attracted over 20 local actors vying for roles in the World War II drama.

The film opens in 1927 Poland and follows the story of a Jewish father and daughter through the horrors of the Polish invasion, ghettos and concentration camps.

Ferguson, of Black Rose Pictures, said he has always liked films about history and war, but noticed an imbalanced trend toward male lead characters. Having a daughter of his own, he wondered what those stories would look like through the eyes of a woman.

“I wanted to challenge myself,” said Ferguson. “And that would be a challenge for a male to write through a female’s eyes and progress through her life and the tragedy.”

Hannah Thomas, a 13-year-old actress from the Quad Cities, traveled to Burlington with her mother, Steph Thomas, to audition for the role of teenage Allison Red.

With experience at the Davenport Junior Theater in whimsical musicals like "Seussical," "Hairspray" and "Newsies," the serious nature of “Allison Red” was different for Thomas.

It’s not just the actors that will be local. Ferguson said several parts of “Allison Red” will be filmed in Burlington. A local apartment building’s lobby will serve as a home for the characters, and abandoned buildings near the theater will serve as Jewish ghettos. Ferguson and his coworkers are still looking for an old synagogue to use.

He said the film has a lot of interaction between characters, or what he calls “spiderwebs.” However, that interaction is not always spoken word.

Admitting that dialogue is not his strongest quality, Ferguson said he takes more of a cinematic beauty approach to tell the tragic story in “Allison Red.” The reason why he is making the film, he said, is to do his part to ensure history doesn't repeat itself.

Christopher Causey, a Muscatine actor already cast to play Hans, a Nazi soldier, shared the sentiment that films like “Allison Red” are important.

“There is a role in society that helps people empathize and that is the responsibility of the actor,” said Causey. “We have to have empathy that we can share with other people.”

In the future, Ferguson said he has several ideas up his sleeve, including a science fiction religion film and a western. It’s the Quentin Tarantino approach, said Causey — “Try every genre and shock people.”

After the first filming season in December, Ferguson said he will return to Burlington in February or March for auditions for the second filming season in April. The film will tentatively be completed by Nov. 2018, and Ferguson hopes one of the first showings can be at the Capitol Theater.

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